Spot director Steve Chase and Rick Davis, MacLaren McCann’s chief creative officer and exec vp, must have a thing about chimps, and Davis is adamant that you don’t go around calling them monkeys, either.

First there was the animatronic/claymation Smarties chimps out of MacLaren; now there’s the real thing.

As you may already know, the typing Chimps – a teaser that actually did earn audience buzz – has indeed turned out to be the pilot for the new gravity-breaking Molson Canadian campaign. Shrouded in secrecy almost as impenetrable as focus-group thinking, all is revealed in the second spot ‘Rocket,’ which treats us to the typing results of Monkey #12, who, it appears, leans more towards sci-fi than Shakespearean prose.

The tape of the alien swarm spot – a strange planet with strange life forms and strangely, but much-appreciated no product shots – arrived in the proverbial plain brown wrapper. Worried that self-destruction thing might occur, immediate perusal revealed that the second link in the campaign lives up to the teaser, brilliantly conceived and executed.

The new spot cuts from the primates typing away at their Underwoods to a grainy B&W-toned moon-cam clip. A low-tech ’50s-stylized rocket lands on a planet and a space-suited guy hops out. Vertically challenged aliens pop out of pools of galactic pond scum and surround the spaceguy, training their pointy little lasers on him in a less than welcoming manner. Just when it seems bound to get ugly, spaceguy points to the maple leaf on his oxygen tank. Intergalactic camaraderie ensues.

All the spots – the campaign was shot over 13 days – are helmed by Chase, whose directorial wit and fearless tackling of things complex in tandem with the preternaturally phat McCann creative is poised to provide kicking Cannes/Clio competition.

But what does it all mean Mabel?

The strategy feeds off youth insights, and is taking a stronger ‘`I am Canadian’ stand up, be proud spirit’ to it, says Davis. Pointing to the ilk of Jacques Villeneuve and Donovan Bailey, lads who don’t mince words, Davis says a lot of the new breed reject the timid, polite Canadian stereotype.

‘Rocket’ is borne of the good feelings engendered wherever Canadians go, the acknowledgment of the effect of the leaf on the backpack, tying in with a solid appreciation of things Canadian.

Another prong in tapping into the urban university-educated youth culture is letting folks use their gray matter (not your typical entry requirement to beer commercial appreciation), and make their own connections.

Davis says that since ’82, Molson Canadian has led the pack in beer ad creative evolution, and that last year, while they sort of ‘hid in the weeds a little bit,’ this year ‘we made a commitment creatively to come flying out and maintain our tradition.’ (Editor’s note: ‘flying out,’ curious phrasing in tandem with monkeys, er, chimps).

They did not test. ‘Traditional research methodology would have killed a campaign like this,’ says Davis. ‘It lacks conformity, and the object of research is to embrace conformity.’

And the client’s mental health? ‘So far, so good.’

I am waiting for the next six-pack of this campaign, and more traditions to be blown out of the beer pool…

Nuts & Bolts:

SPOT #1. Curiously, Chase had worked with the chimps (who are also from l.a.) before, on Bud Light. There were only four of the prolific primates, but they could type, and did so over five days before cameras in a Montreal church, receding bench shot after bench shot.

There were typically around 25 to 40 bench moves for each shot, with the biggest shot containing over 300 layers. Green screen passes were done until they captured all the desk positions needed to cover all the different perspectives visible in the shot.

Chase says there was no digital cloning to create that depth of scribe tribe dimension. There was some rubber stamping, but only far back in the room where perspective no longer changed. Where you see numerous chimps in a row, ‘we just moved them over and shot them again,’ says Chase, ‘we changed their positions so the big guy wasn’t always first, and did numerous takes so the action would never repeat itself.

‘Everything you see was shot, it’s just compositing, really. It was almost a math exercise.’

Beyond the computational aspect, the ominous-yet-droll touch of Chase ultimately makes it feel like one of those tbs monkey movie versions of Brazil, but with heightened reality.

Producer Deborah Narine credits Chase’s meticulous thinking for making it look ‘not cheesy.’ The shot is used as a bookend for the campaign, so Narine says, ‘we took the time to do it properly.’

Shifts at Axyz worked day and night over nine days to put it all together. Being able to move from room to room, between Bruce Copeman cutting and Dave Giles comping, was very handy, Narine adds.

SPOT #2. The aliens who popped out of soggy craters were midgets – also from Montreal – on a set that was a quarter the size of a football field – at Oasis.

The short folk playing the aliens had to walk backwards (a source of much hilarity given the cumbersome garb), and footage was then reversed to up the quirk factor. It was hand cranked for a retro feel. This one is an edgy send-up of all the b sci-fi flicks where you watch for the strings.

Roll credits Monkey/Rocket:

Creative directors #1-3: Rick Davis/Mark Fitzgerald/Kerry Reynolds

Copywriter: Fitzgerald

Art director: Reynolds

Broadcast producer: Deborah Narine

Production house: Jolly Roger

Director: Steve Chase

dop: Barry Peterson

Editor: Bruce Copeman

SFX/Flame artist: Dave Giles

Sound design & music: Einstein Bros.

Client: Molson Breweries – Bill Copeman

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In case you were wondering what’s up next for l.a.-based Chase, beyond working on his tan, he’s meeting with The Bubble Factory folks on a dark comedy called Swindlers. Despite the latent feature interest, Chase had put that facet of his career on the back burner (after quitting his last film) in order to concentrate on his commercial career. ‘I’m pursuing features, but I’m not going to mortgage this career for them.’